Articles and Analysis

We have logged another 17 statewide surveys on the presidential race over the last 24 hours. None of these has shifted our classifications, so the map continues to show Barack Obama with 238 electoral votes to 224 for John McCain and 76 in the toss-up category (270 needed to win).

Eight of the new statewide polls were conducted by pollster updating their results for the first time since the conventions, and all eight show the same shift to John McCain that has been evident in surveys we have been reporting for the last week.

However, Fox News and Rasmussen released five new surveys yesterday in battleground states last night (Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia) that represent their second weekly tracking poll since the Republican convention. SurveyUSA added another new survey in Virginia that is also a second track since the Republicans left St. Paul.

Three of these surveys show a net numeric gain for Obama, three show a net numeric gain for McCain, though all of the changes are well within sampling error for any of the individual surveys. Amazingly, when I average the six polls from this week and last, I get a 0.3% average drop for each candidate. What does this mean? Most of the differences are probably noise, as vote preferences have been pretty flat in the battleground states over the last week.

Comments

thoughtful:

Mark

You refer to Rasmussen "second weekly trackers". I am not sure how Ras uses his ID party weighting but how can these be referred to as trackers if he adjusts the weightings from the 8th to the 15th? its not the same carriage going down the line - its been modified.

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